A rollicking but thin nonfictional rendering of two of history’s most mythologized outlaws.
A comparative study of the simultaneous late-19th-century rises of iconic gunfighters Billy the Kid (1859-1881) and Ned Kelly (1854-1880).
The author of biographies of legendary Indian chief Geronimo as well as Billy the Kid, former National Park Service chief historian Utley (Lone Star Lawmen: The Second Century of the Texas Rangers, 2007, etc.) here traces the similarities between the two from their earliest auspicious criminal beginnings to their respective violent demises. The author also gives insight into the legends surrounding both men, which continue to endure in the pages of popular history. Though the narrative is supposed to be a close comparison of these two violent-minded bushwhackers—with Kelly rising to infamy in the Australian Outback and Billy making his bloody mark in the American Southwest—Utley devotes the first half of the book to Billy and the second to Kelly, with only a brief concluding chapter juxtaposing the two outlaws’ lives and noting their major similarities and differences. The section on Billy paints a scenario of the hyperviolent Old West that bursts with plenty of visceral, cinematic action. We get a keen sense of both outlaws’ lives on the run and how both seemed to cheat death to the point where they seemed infallible. Of course, Billy would end up shot by Sheriff Pat Garrett. As for Kelly, even the oddball use of body armor couldn’t stop him from being apprehended—authorities peppered his legs with buckshot and brought him down—and he was eventually sentenced to hang. Utley is a fine historian and decent writer, but the narrative is too straightforward and bland when delineating the afterlives of both subjects, with a rote listing of all the various (and often kitschy) roles these two popular criminals still play in contemporary popular culture.
A rollicking but thin nonfictional rendering of two of history’s most mythologized outlaws.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-300-20455-1
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2015
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A standout immigrant coming-of-age story.
In her first nonfiction book, novelist Grande (Dancing with Butterflies, 2009, etc.) delves into her family’s cycle of separation and reunification.
Raised in poverty so severe that spaghetti reminded her of the tapeworms endemic to children in her Mexican hometown, the author is her family’s only college graduate and writer, whose honors include an American Book Award and International Latino Book Award. Though she was too young to remember her father when he entered the United States illegally seeking money to improve life for his family, she idolized him from afar. However, she also blamed him for taking away her mother after he sent for her when the author was not yet 5 years old. Though she emulated her sister, she ultimately answered to herself, and both siblings constantly sought affirmation of their parents’ love, whether they were present or not. When one caused disappointment, the siblings focused their hopes on the other. These contradictions prove to be the narrator’s hallmarks, as she consistently displays a fierce willingness to ask tough questions, accept startling answers, and candidly render emotional and physical violence. Even as a girl, Grande understood the redemptive power of language to define—in the U.S., her name’s literal translation, “big queen,” led to ridicule from other children—and to complicate. In spelling class, when a teacher used the sentence “my mamá loves me” (mi mamá me ama), Grande decided to “rearrange the words so that they formed a question: ¿Me ama mi mamá? Does my mama love me?”
A standout immigrant coming-of-age story.Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4516-6177-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: June 11, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2012
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